Below the parapet is a set of
machicolations through which missiles could be dropped on besiegers.
The lower, straight-axis front gate, accessed across a drawbridge and opening into the bailey, was crowned with heavy overhanging
machicolations. Having broken through, an attacker would face the blank front wall of the main gate, a three-storey keep with plain crenel/merlon battlements.
One of de Chirico's paintings, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, features a typical metaphysical setting where a girl runs up a street (not a rampart but a ramp) and the building behind her shows spires and
machicolations. A variation on the same motif, Melancolie d'une rue, pictures a background with a station clock and the shadow of a tower, projected from outside the frame.
On the north side, it rose from the sheer cliffs (falaises) of a rocky spur; ont the west it was linked to a smaller keep and on the south, to a 35m high cylindrical tower surmounted by
machicolations, added in the thirteen century.
In particular he was responsible for encouraging the use of brick and much of this work has survived, though at Tattershall the
machicolations are surely more aptly described as impressive than "formidable." Brick, after all, was more suitable for domestic than military architecture.
